As Tropical Storm Harvey heads back inland, slamming southwest Texas with another 15-25 inches of rain, Housting officials are reporting that the city’s critical infrastructure is starting to fail under the weight of the floodwaters, and may soon collapse.

Climate change is an inexorable and contemporary threat with drastic impacts on the survival and living patterns of mankind. Pakistan ranks seventh among the most adversely affected countries by climate change on the Global Climate Risk Index 2017. Pakistan has suffered the devastating impacts of natural disasters and climate change in the recent years, witnessing an earthquake in 2005 and heavy floods in 2010. Climate change have rapidly increased in Pakistan, causing and exacerbating disasters, forcing people to flee their homes and seek shelter elsewhere, thus leading to a climate-induced migration.

As climate change rips away the icy armor of the Arctic, nations surrounding the North Pole and companies eager to exploit the area’s mineral wealth–particularly oil and natural gas–are growing giddy with anticipation.

So reports the Associated Press, though the AP is by no means the first to report this story. The slow-motion battle over the increasingly accessible resources of the Arctic is certainly a story. But the prevailing version of that story lacks the proper context, one that is hard to provide since the implications of global climate change are vast and difficult to grasp.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

The U.S. and Japan will call for an international embargo on oil exports to North Korea in response to Tuesday’s launch of a ballistic missile over Japan, as the allies seek to strike at the lifeblood of Pyongyang’s weapons programs.

A months-long investigation which tracked and exposed a massive covert weapons shipment network to terror groups in Syria via diplomatic flights originating in the Caucuses and Eastern Europe under the watch of the CIA and other intelligence agencies has resulted in the interrogation and firing of the Bulgarian journalist who first broke the story. This comes as the original report is finally breaking into mainstream international coverage.

The U.S. mainstream media is touting a big break in Russia-gate, emails showing an effort by Donald Trump’s associates to construct a building in Moscow. But the evidence actually undercuts the “scandal.”

The average reader would never know that U.S. and NATO forces themselves engaged this summer in “their largest military exercises since the end of the Cold War,” to quote NPR. Nor would they know that NATO collectively spends 12 times more than Russia on its military, or that its European members alone field nearly 75 percent more military personnel than Russia.

Chinese electrical appliances manufacturer, the Midea Group, has filed a patent for a technique for mining Bitcoin using household products. The patent application was published earlier in 2017 by the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of the People’s Republic of China.

Based on the patent application, Midea plans to embed specialized mining chips inside its appliance products like air conditioners, dehumidifiers, and TV for the purpose of digital currency mining. Once the chips are programmed, the products will then connect to a cloud-based service and contribute their hashing power to mine cryptocurrencies.

Uncle Sam has Bitcoin traders on the radar these days, as the cryptocurrency passes $4,300 in late August trading. With more assets pouring into digital currencies, the federal government, via the Internal Revenue Service, is looking to get its fair share from Bitcoin — a cut that the IRS doesn’t believe it’s been getting until now. That could change, and fast, as the IRS is using a software program that monitors Bitcoin-based digital addresses, in a campaign to identify potential tax evaders.

Imagine you’re a journalist, meeting with a secret government source. Thanks to the information provided by this source, you break an astronomically important story of government fraud or abuse. After the story breaks, the government decides it wants to go back and look at your cell phone’s historic geolocation information and metadata, tracking your every move and jeopardizing your source. Current Supreme Court precedent and a decision by the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals allow government to collect this type of metadata without a warrant.